


light does not stay

by orphan_account



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, F/F, Moicy Week 2018, hades!mercy, persephone!moira, y'all know what this is gonna be...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-06-28 13:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15708138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Moira considers Angela like she’s seeing her again, after winter has left the earth. “I need help,” she says. It’s harsh, it’s blunt—“I will not bring back your mortal lover,” Angela says, gravel rolling from her throat. Moira may be enchanting, her beauty apparent in all the long lines and rivers of flowers draped over her arms, but there are many things she’s supposed to do, and keeping the dead confined is one of them.





	light does not stay

Moira is far too beautiful to be caught in the Underworld: within the stifling darkness, where her light cannot shine and where the sun cannot reach her.

That’s Angela’s first thought, and it dawns upon her when Moira steps into the light. Her beauty isn’t a traditional thing—no, her hair is cut short, tresses the color of fire teasing the flowers draped over her shoulders, and she’s all angles. She’s tall, too.

Her eyes—and this is what Angela gets caught on—her eyes are so very much alive.

And then she speaks, drawling, “You must be Angela,” in a rough voice that’s soft around the edges. It’s oddly familiar, but like most things, she cannot place it.

“I am,” she agrees, and the smile that comes is nothing easy. It’s strange to hear a voice that isn’t her own, and even stranger to muster up any hospitality in the face of someone unknown, so she’s upfront when she asks, “What are you doing here?”

Moira considers Angela like she’s seeing her again, after winter has left the earth. “I need help,” she says. It’s harsh, it’s blunt—

“I will not bring back your mortal lover,” Angela says, gravel rolling from her throat. Moira may be enchanting, her beauty apparent in all the long lines and rivers of flowers draped over her arms, but there are many things she’s supposed to do, and keeping the dead confined is one of them.

She’s the Underworld’s god. What good would she be if she let them go?

 

 

(There was once a time when Angela wasn’t doing this. She wasn’t walking these long halls, listening to the dead, and she wasn’t turning away gods whose love for their partners was greater than the fear of death.

She can only recall the barebones of her memories: a tulip’s petals, cradled in her hand; her fingers brushing with someone else’s as they traded roses; the wind’s guiding breeze. It didn’t last long. Angela may have loved the woman she’d made company with more than the open sky, but there was nothing that could stop her from traveling the heavens.

And yet, she turned it all away to sink within the earth’s embrace.)

 

 

Shock ripples across Moira’s face. “I have no mortal lovers,” she says. There’s a silence, then, and Angela tilts her chin up to look Moira in the eye. It takes her a moment, but then she adds, “I have nowhere else to go,” quietly, whispered into the Underworld’s darkness, and she sounds strangled by the flowers she wears.

Moira seems shackled by something, but not the darkness that’s draped over Angela’s shoulders or woven around her fingers. Her own chains are abundant, and if it’s the shadows for Angela, then what could it possibly be for Moira?

“I have nowhere else to go,” Moira repeats, closer to Angela. She dips her head, expression open. There’s resignation there, yes—

Angela swallows back her unease.

Moira’s larger than life, and to contain her in the confines of the Underworld with the dead for company…

“My name is Angela,” she says. It’s enough of an answer for Moira.

She tips her head, brushing a few strands of hair behind her ear and correcting a stray flower. She picks a blue violet and offers it to Angela like an afterthought. “My name is Moira,” she says, and then—

Dark, wretched scars rip across Moira’s knuckles, twist across her hand and loop around her wrist before disappearing beneath the fall of her sleeve. There’s no jewelry on this hand, unlike the oak rings on her other. Angela feels the pull of death in Moira’s blood when she reaches to take the flower and their fingers brush. “Welcome to the Underworld,” she says.

If Moira notices her staring, she doesn’t give much of a response besides a glance to the side. She tucks her hand back within the folders of her robes, concealed by her cloak, and smiles faintly at Angela when she offers her arm. “How courteous.”

Angela doesn’t respond with anything but an attempt at a smile.

The torches brighten as they—as _Moira_ passes through one of the wider halls, and they dim when she’s out of reach. Even fire seems to recognize her presence when it’s never done that for Angela. The flowers that Moira brought with her are still alive, too, even in the Underworld’s darkness.

Strange.

Moira reminds Angela of everything she’s missed while stuck with the dead. The sun, the oceans, the sky. She wants to stand in a meadow and bask in the warmth, but that’s… unlikely. The Underworld will always need a god, and Moira smells of spring’s first rain. Angela can’t trade places with someone so lively, even if her attitude is subdued.

Maybe isolation is taking its toll on her.

The silence is broken when Moira’s voice comes, quiet as an autumn morning, and asks, “How long have you been here, Angela?”

For a moment, she forgets how to speak, how to use her voice, and perhaps it was a fluke that she even spoke at all. There’s something catching in her throat, and Angela glances at the shadows for a moment before looking back to Moira.

She looks expectant, curious, and most of all, intrigued.

“I don’t know,” Angela says plainly. She’s lost countless months, years, centuries to the Underworld’s grasp, and she’s no better than the dead who inhabit it.

Moira’s fingers are tucked in the crook of Angela’s elbow, and when they flex, she can feel the anxiety hidden there. “I’m sorry,” she says. It’s strangled, like the flowers have turned to vines and wrapped themselves around her neck.

Angela responds with, “It’s alright,” but she doesn’t quite mean it. Few things remind her of who she was like Moira has. It unnerves her in a way the Underworld doesn’t.

It’s sentient, too—sentient in a way Angela’s never tried to fully grasp. The hallways change when she asks them to, but some things are set in stone: the rivers, the fields, and the village. The palace—because that’s what it is no matter how many times Angela’s tried to will it into something else—only changes the interior.

Angela leads Moira across a bridge that covers the River Styx, only for her to stop and nearly send Angela stumbling. “So this is your home,” Moira observes.

 _It’s not my home,_ is what she thinks, breathes, doesn’t say, but Angela’s been in this void for so long that she can’t think differently. “This is part of it,” Angela says, half a step behind Moira as she nears the edge of the bridge.

Dark water rolls across unseen rocks, and when she’d first seen it, Angela had thought of spilled ink. No, it’s the amalgamation of darkness, beckoning like the rest of the Underworld but far more sinister. She remembers someone—something—telling her that to sink within the river would be to forget all but hatred.

When Angela tears her gaze away from the water to look at Moira, she thinks, maybe that’s what she wants.

“Fascinating,” Moira says, those Stygian depths reflected in her gaze.

She doesn’t like the notes in Moira’s voice, notes that the piano could never hope to replicate, or the darkness in her lungs. “This is the River Styx,” Angela says, fingers curling around Moira’s good hand to anchor her. “You haven’t seen the rest of it yet.”

“Styx, or your home?”

There’s nothing that could get her to show Moira the River Styx in greater detail, and the water shifts like it knows what Angela’s thinking. She swallows. “This way,” Angela answers, taking Moira away from the river.

The bridge turns into an open courtyard. Dead flowers are folded into the earth alongside the path and along the edges, lanterns set in place of torches, and Moira’s step slows considerably. She’d already adjusted her pace to accommodate for Angela, but when she looks up, the shock on Moira’s face is—startling.

It’s like nothing has ever decayed at her touch.

Angela doubts that anything’s ever wanted to.

“Everything dies here,” she says. Maybe she’s being selfish for not turning Moira away, but she’s reminded of the pull of death in Moira’s blood. “Some mortals think the afterlife is beautiful, but nothing stays alive.”

Moira remains silent as Angela leads her through the courtyard and around the various corridors, finally coming to the gardens. She wonders if seeing these will be enough for Moira to remember there’s other places for her—other, better places.

_I have nowhere else to go._

Angela tastes something bitter as Moira releases her arm to crouch beside the flowerbed. She already misses the touch.

“They’re lilacs,” she murmurs, remorse tangible as she reaches for them with her good hand. Moira coaxes lilacs to life, pressing spirit into each petal, and then turns to another. They’re a gentle purple, but such a lovely contrast against the Underworld’s bleakness.

Angela’s gaze turns to Moira before she looks back to the lilacs, enraptured.

Moira deserves to be somewhere beautiful, caught amid spring’s bloom, or settling down with the earth at the turn of autumn. The Underworld is undeserving of—of this. Of Moira’s life, her light, and the vibrancy she’s already brought by being here. Angela feels selfish yet again, but this was all Moira’s choice.

She’s not holding her here against her will—no, Moira’s deciding to be here, sealing a space for herself with each flower she brings to life.

Moira rises, all grace and long limbs as she makes her way along the path. It’s slow, gradual, but colors blooms from her fingertips. These are things that Angela hasn’t seen in ages, and it’s breathtaking.

She doesn’t realize she’s been sitting in the same spot until Moira turns to smile at her, and it’s—good. Moira’s smile is something new, good, and earnest despite the shadows that flock to her. “Are you going to stay there?” Moira asks, amusement creasing the corners of her eyes. “I cannot imagine that’s comfortable.”

Angela pushes herself off the ground once Moira comes close enough, brushing off her skirts before offering Moira her arm. “I haven’t shown you everything,” she says at long last, unable to stop herself from returning Moira’s smile.

  
  
  


Moira politely refuses Angela’s request to show her to the rooms, instead occupying herself with the second garden. She can’t remember if that was there before or not, but Moira’s grim determination to bring color into the Underworld is more than enough for Angela.

Nonetheless, Angela’s itching to move. She leaves Moira there, passes the flowers that glow with life, and turns from the River Styx.

When she’d first arrived, Angela hadn’t known the Underworld like she does now. It’s a bitter place, set into the earth with archaic rules, and sealed with water. She knows it wasn’t her predecessor who set in those laws into place—no, it was someone before him, someone whose name nobody can seem to remember.

Angela knows that the living cannot enter the Underworld. Gods may enter for a set period, but the duration has never been tested, for they’re too afraid of what may come.

And that’s what Moira is: a god who’s decided to test the rules.

The path up to the Underworld’s entrance is steep and long. The stairs are crumbling, a testament to the age of the earth, so Angela takes care to avoid any missteps as she ascends them, gaze fixed upon the gates at the top. They’re iron, wrought from the void between the stars, and it’s like they’re a point of total darkness against the light that shines weakly from the top of the passage.

Angela stops before the gate, calves aching from the steep walk, and breathes. She’s wanted company for what feels like an eternity—oh, she’s begged for company, cried to the shadows, pleaded to the light, but there’s never been any answer.

She wouldn’t call Moira an answer; no, not when she’s staring at the unlocked gates that have death’s fingerprints upon them.

  
  
  


Moira finds her in the opera hall.

Light reaches to the very top of the arcing ceilings, rippling across Angela’s hands and the piano keys. It’s not where she wants to be—no, she hasn’t been where she’s wanted to be in eternity—but it’s enough to play and hear something other than herself.

“Angela,” Moira greets, voice rough even in her cordiality. She thinks it’s nice. “It took me quite awhile to find you.”

It must’ve. The halls are prone to changing in tandem to Angela’s moods, no matter how often they revert at her incessant irritation. The Underworld changes at Angela’s will, yes, but sometimes, it only listens to her emotions.

Moira’s walking down the long aisles, robes sweeping the obsidian floors. Silver is looped around her throat, complimented by roses darker than blood, but there’s peonies, too. Angela thinks they might be peonies, at the very least. She’s forgotten a lot of things.

“It’s hard to find anyone here,” Angela responds, tearing her gaze away from Moira and clasping her hands together. “The dead—”

Moira’s smile is strangely kind. “The dead are pleased to have company like yours.”

She’s closer now, and again, Angela lets herself look. She could ask a million questions.

Her vision turns, and all she can hear are her own footsteps: hurried, excited. There’s the sweep of her skirts, her sharp intake of breath, and then she hears Moira’s. Slow, muffled, hidden by endless robes that spill across the floor.

It’s gone as soon as it came. Angela resists the urge to leave Moira alone, to isolate herself, to breathe.

“Do you play?” Moira inquires, coming to stand beside the piano.

Angela glances across the keys before looking up to Moira. “No,” she answers. It’s a lie, but after that tumultuous meeting and the idea—the mere idea of someone being here, sharing the same space of Angela— She wants company, craves it, but there’s so, so much apprehension.

“I remember some of it,” Moira says, gesturing to the bench. “May I?”

“Of course,” Angela says, rushed, and she nearly trips in her haste to get up—but then there’s Moira’s hand again, the one untouched by a curse.

“I apologize. You can stay.”

Angela swallows, tries for a smile. “I don’t want to get in your way.”

“You won’t,” Moira promises, her hand still raised. Angela finds herself taking it, breathing past the cloud of anxiety, and sliding back onto the bench. “It looks like you’ve tried to play, Angela.”

She has. Moira’s gaze is like lightning, so Angela says as much.

“I thought so,” she says, pulling her scarred hand from the folds of her robes. Moira glances away, but Angela can’t tell if it’s from shame or something else, but then—her voice is so, so quiet, and even in the darkness of the Underworld, Angela strains to hear her say, “You can ask.”

This is what she wanted, isn’t it?

Angela pushes back the unease in her throat.

“It’s not my business,” Angela says, and it’s not. Moira may have waltzed into the Underworld with death at her fingertips, but if she wants to make a home for herself here, who is Angela to stop her?

Moira apparently thinks otherwise, for she says, “It was your business the moment I asked who you are.”

Angela looks away, tears herself away from Moira’s mismatched gaze, and the silence is broken by the gentle sound of the piano. The melody sounds like one of mourning.

She doesn’t know what has been lost.

  
  
  


Moira tells her that spring was in bloom when she’d last felt the sun on her face, fingers curled around a mug and gaze keen. There’s no remorse in her voice, none that Angela hears, but her chest aches. She can hardly remember the last time she’d been standing in the sun, let alone the way the seasons changed.

“And the other gods?” Angela prompts, considering the liquid in her own mug. It’s a frivolity, as most things are, but it’s what Moira had requested. _Irish coffee,_ she had said, and Angela pretended to know what that meant when she collected the right ingredients and left it to her.

Moira takes a sip—careful, controlled, and refined in a way that strikes Angela as odd, even when she’s come to know that’s just how Moira is. “Which ones?” she parries, head tilted, and it strikes Angela then that she’s forgotten their names.

She turns her gaze to the rest of the garden: larger than life, bigger than this confined world, but Angela’s grateful for it. The flowers give her a moment to collect her thoughts, to see if she can recall the names of those she’d loved so dearly, but like so many things, she cannot. It hurts, just a little, but—

“Ana is well,” Moira begins, following Angela’s gaze to the flowers. “She’s still courting that mortal, but she and Reinhardt are happy with each other and whatever his name is.”

Angela stills her hands, reveling in the warmth of the mug while Moira speaks.

“Gabriel, too,” Moira says. “He and Jack are at odds, as they often are, though I see little difference in them. They may go about things in their unlikely ways, but they’re the same at their cores. Perhaps that is why they get along so well and so terribly.”

Something settles in Angela’s chest; ease, maybe, but she doesn’t quite know what it is.

Moira raises her mug to take a sip, consideration creasing her brow. “Things are changing,” she says, and there’s a strange note in her voice. It’s final, Angela thinks, final in the way that death is. “Everything’s changing, truly, but the gods don’t know what to do about it.”

“Sounds familiar,” Angela responds, faking knowledge she doesn’t quite have. “The dead have never been too fond of how easily the Underworld changes.”

Moira’s smile is a gradual thing, like the slow turn from summer to autumn. “I’m afraid that it’s grown on me,” she says, meeting Angela’s gaze evenly.

“You’re the first to say that,” Angela says, but Moira only smiles again. It seems that their conversation is left there, for Moira finishes her coffee and leaves. Angela watches her leave, follows the trail of her robes, and though she doesn’t quite realize it at the moment, she wishes she were there beside Moira.

Angela smiles without being able to stop herself.

  
  
  


Moira’s robes are the color of what Angela thinks the summer dawn would be like—shrouded in mist, brightened by the lingering stars, and such a sharp contrast to the dark cobblestone underfoot. The yellow and pink begonias pressed into her collar, a settling point, and Moira adjusts them with a steady hand when Angela stops beside her.

There’s no smile, but there’s fondness in her voice when she says, “Hello.”

“Moira,” Angela greets, crouched beside Moira when she gestures her closer.

Moira holds her palm out, showing a handful of seeds. “Do you ever get tired of seeing so much death, Angela?” she asks, voice all rough silk as she sets the seeds down to begin digging. “I never would’ve thought I’d miss life.”

“I do,” Angela answers, watching as Moira tucks one of the seeds in the earth. She’s startled when the words leave her mouth; it’s something she’s always thought about, but never said.

“Do you ever wish you could leave?”

Angela pushes back the desire to withdraw from Moira. “I do,” she says, and while this isn’t uncomfortable, she hasn’t spoken this freely in what feels like forever.

Their eyes meet. Angela finds herself stuck comparing Moira’s gaze to a bed of roses under the clear blue sky, but she’s not a poet. If Moira notices Angela’s struggle, then she doesn’t say anything, just turns back to the flowerbed.

But Moira’s voice, quieter than the night, rings in Angela’s mind. “You can ask,” she’d said, and Angela wants to ask.

She wants to ask more than anything.

Moira has already smoothed the earth over by the time Angela gains her bearings. She’s embarrassed by her lapse in concentration, and yet, there’s the possibility that Moira didn’t notice at all.

Maybe they were both caught in their own thoughts.

“Moira,” Angela begins, “can I—”

She hears Moira’s sharp intake of breath just like the beating of her own heart. Her head is turned away, bowed; the seeds, the roses are better company than Angela could ever be.

“Can I ask?”

Moira remains stiller than death, and with a steady hand, she pushes the crown up. “You may,” she allows. Angela would have to be a fool to be oblivious to the shame packed into those two words.

She leans closer, and she can’t help it. There’s nobody here except for them, but Angela’s voice is hushed when she asks, “What happened to your arm?”

It takes a moment for Moira to splay her fingers across the earth, and though there’s nothing visual, Angela can tell she’s doing what she did to rejuvenate the garden—the flowers, the leaves, the trees. It’s nice to see something that isn’t wilting.

Moira extends her hand to Angela, dirt under her fingernails and life in her palm. It’s no surprise that Angela takes it.

“Shall we take a walk?”

“Of course,” Angela responds, tucking her hand in the crook of Moira’s elbow.

There’s a smile this time, however faint. Angela doesn’t understand why Moira can’t stay there and tell her, but maybe it’s the same reason why she spent eternity carving paths through the Underworld.

Moira carries the scent of the earth—the good, kind earth, and that’s what spurs Angela to say, “Thank you.”

She falters in her step, and Angela nearly trips. “For what?” Moira asks, bewilderment written across her face. It’s found in the crease between her brows and the uncertain line of her lips. They right themselves a moment later, and there’s something sheepish in the curve of Moira’s shoulders as they keep walking.

“Thank you,” Angela repeats, tipping her uncrowned head to the side, towards the blooming roses, “for making this look lovely.”

“It already did,” Moira responds. As easily as she doles out compliments, Angela wouldn’t be surprised if venomous words were the same.

Nonetheless, Angela’s smile is warm. Moira doesn’t return it, not yet, but the unease is lessening. She hopes it is.

They pass through the courtyard into another. It wasn’t here moments ago, and if Moira’s surprised, she doesn’t show it. Instead, Angela keeps her hands on Moira’s arm as she finds another crop of wilted flowers.

She doesn’t reach for the flowers like she’s done before. Moira stays there, waiting, and Angela waits with her. Moira pulls her hand from the folds of her robes, hovering nervously in the air before Angela takes it. It feels like she’s found a home.

“I’m going to die,” Moira says at long last, sounding resigned.

She’s not looking at Angela, but when Moira does when she says, “That’s why you came to the Underworld, isn’t it?”

Something strikes Angela’s heart, her lungs, her chest at the look in Moira’s eyes. It’s resignation, it’s fear, but there—

There, when Angela looks, is pain.

“I wanted to acquaint myself with the dead,” Moira murmurs, scarred fingers curling around Angela’s, “before I joined them myself.”

She’s a god, a person, and they die.

Moira lets out a rough breath. “I wasn’t expecting to find you.”

“The Underworld needs a god,” Angela says reflexively, teeth clicking when she shuts her mouth.

“A lovely god indeed,” Moira agrees, gaze soft—

  


(Angela thinks she was happy. The skies were her companion and the earth’s blossoms were her gift.

She can remember a woman taller than her, harsher; a woman who stood rooted in the earth, even though the followed the wind to stay with Angela. She can remember lounging in the trees’ generous boughs with this woman, conversation easier than breathing, easier than living. It’s like nothing she’s known before, incomparable to the rolling sunlight and earth’s lullabies.

Once upon a time, Angela wasn’t dwelling upon memories. Instead, she was living them.)

  


“How did this happen?” Angela asks, tightening her grip on Moira’s hand. She can feel the pull of death where their palms meet.

Moira glances away, and for a moment, Angela thinks she’s about to say, _I’m sorry, I can’t tell you, I’m leaving_ —but she doesn’t. “I angered one of the gods.”

Angela stares.

“It was intentional,” Moira says.

Angela nearly releases Moira’s hand out of surprise, but she holds fast. If Moira angered a god, who cursed her with death, then there’s only so many—

She’s going to have a headache.

“Which god?” Angela asks, mouth dry.

Moira’s gaze turns to the wilted flowers, and though she doesn’t reach for them, Angela knows she wants to. “Your predecessor.”

Angela genuinely can’t tell if she’s feeling exasperation or a headache. A mix of both, maybe, but it’s been so long since she’s experienced anything beyond exhaustion that it’s all beyond her. Her emotions aren’t important, however prevalent they may be, because she’s too intent on sorting out the mess that this seems to be. Her predecessor—what even was his name?

She can hardly remember it, but she knows he was stocky, clinical to a degree, and had a temper worse than the fires that were tucked into the earth’s depths. Angela can remember the way he never gestured, the way he truly was the personification of death in a way she never could be.

“It wasn’t wholly intentional,” Moira says, and strangely, she sounds apologetic.

She looks away when Angela raises her gaze, good hand raised in surrender. Angela can’t say it was a rude look—or mean, but really, was it?

Then, out of everything, Moira has the grace to look sheepish. “It was intentional. I apologize.”

“Why?” is all Angela can ask.

Moira’s fingers brush her own, and Angela can’t help but admire the sad smile that follows. “I’ll tell you another time, Angela,” she says, and it’s like she’s caught in the moment, long enough for Angela to bask in and yet no time to immortalize it, but Angela—

Angela’s already pulling Moira to her feet, nearly tripping over the hem of her skirts in her haste to drag her down the path.

  
  
  


The spirits that dwell within the rivers and lake always know too much, and it’s always disturbed Angela. Lethe, especially—for all that she takes, she knows double that.

Moira curls her fingers around Angela’s arm this time, hand settled in the crook of her elbow. “Where are we going?” she inquires, voice slipping through the tunnel.

Angela keeps walking, but she slows her steps to give herself the chance to think. Moira kept her anchored when her thoughts were prone to drifting. “The River Lethe,” Angela answers, tipping her head back to look Moira in the eye.

There’s no trepidation or fear, though that may be lack of knowledge on Moira’s part, but there’s curiosity glittering in the depths of her gaze.

“Her god is named Amélie,” she says. “The water will make your hand forget the curse was even there.”

Moira’s grip tightens near imperceptibly. “Would you elaborate, Angela?”

“The dead drink the river’s waters to forget about their lives,” Angela says, studying Moira’s profile before looking away. “They forget everything—their names, their families, how they died. They think it’s a way to cope, but the waters are enchanted. A sip brings oblivion.”

“And what will happen to me?” Moira asks, voice dangerously quiet.

Angela covers Moira’s hand with her own, gaze forward. “If you submerge your hand, the curse will lift.”

“Is that so?”

“You want to go for a swim, don’t you?” Angela asks, reaching for whatever humor she can find.

And it works—just enough that the crease at Moira’s brow eases, smile faint but there. “No,” she answers dryly. “I’ve always preferred to tend to the flowers.”

“Fitting,” Angela says, gaze rising to the small blooms tucked into Moira’s hair.

They fall into silence that’s not quite comfortable, but nearly. There’s vines wrapped around Angela’s lungs, and as they near the sound of running water, she can tell Moira’s anxious by the curl of her fingers.

Light from the torches reflects off the water and onto the walls, playing a mirage Angela can’t even begin to guess at. The water, in sharp contrast to Styx’s, is clear—she can see the bottom of the river, where the firelight touches.

“Is this it?” Moira asks. At Angela’s nod, she steps closer to the water, reaching for the edge of her sleeve. She hesitates once, fingers toying with the silk there.

Angela joins her beside the water, careful to keep her robes dry. She can see the hesitation there, can feel it, has known it. “I’m sure this will work.”

“Will it?” a silky voice asks, and Angela’s gaze turns to the water. Amélie.

“It will,” Angela says—because she’s confident.

Amélie splays her fingers against the water’s surface, rising in one fluid motion. Her skin’s the color of the ocean—what color Angela remembers the ocean being—and her gaze is golden. Keen. Intelligent. She looks at Moira with a lidded gaze before it turns back to Angela.

Trepidation curls in Angela’s gut like a promise.

“The River Lethe’s waters don’t work on gods,” Amélie says smoothly.

Oh.

Surprise flickers across Angela’s face, and she can see it in Moira’s too before it smooths into something more passive. Angela steps closer, toeing the water’s edge, and Amélie says, “But I can.”

“Can you?” Moira says, cold light deepening the scars on her hands.

Amélie’s taller than Angela, but shorter than Moira. Her gaze is unnerving, and she’s always known too much—too much for Angela’s liking. She curls her fingers around Moira’s wrist, and all Angela wants to do is pull Moira away and find some other path to take.

“What do you feel?”

Angela tears her gaze from Amélie to look at Moira. She can’t tell if Moira’s baiting Amélie or being genuine.

Amélie doesn’t smile, but mirth glitters in the depth of her gaze despite the passive turn of her lips. “I don’t feel anything,” she responds, voice dangerously low. “Isn’t that the point? You will soon feel oblivion like I do.”

“Unless you take it away,” Angela cuts in, and she meets Amélie’s gaze squarely.

“What would you give in trade for her life?” Amélie asks, fingers snaking around Angela’s own wrist.

There’s nothing that Angela has that Amélie doesn’t.

Amélie has knowledge—taken from the countless dead who drink from her waters, taken from the water that drips from heaven and sinks into her river, and power over where her river flows. Angela may rule the Underworld, yes, but Amélie wrote a set of laws into place and protected herself with them.

Angela pulls her hand from Amélie’s grip to take her hand instead. It’s like wading through the void with one hand on Moira’s arm and the other in Amélie’s. “What would you want?” she counters.

“Nothing,” Amélie answers, hand drawn from Angela’s like falling water.

Moira’s shift closer to Angela is near imperceptible as Amélie pulls her hand away from Moira’s wrist. Angela feels the pull of death more than she had previously. It’s aggressive, all-consuming, and manifests in something darker than the depths of the Underworld and the void between the stars.

Amélie keeps it contained between her hands like a pretty cage, gaze empty when she locks eyes with Angela. There’s nothing there, and then—

Angela falters, and if not for Moira’s steady hand, she’s certain she would’ve plunged into the River Lethe. Memories flood her mind, settling into her soul like the thing she’s gone so long without, but this time, they’re concrete.

  


(There are plenty of things that Angela knows, and among them, there’s the fact that she loves Moira.

There’s nothing like it, truly; Angela has loved and lost, breathed through the pain and through the ruptured earth, and ultimately, she’s made it. But then—there was Moira, and Angela can remember the way the sun rose over the horizon, cast shadows across the ground, but it highlighted the gorgeous curve of her smile.

Maybe it was harsh—cold like winter, and yet, there was summer’s burn, so contrarian but so intoxicating. There’s nothing torrid about their love, Angela’s sure, but it’s like Moira’s always belonged there, tucked into her heart like she owns it, like it was her designated home. She knows they’re meant to be when Moira says, “You’re such a long way from the heavens.”

Angela is, but nobody needs to know that, least of all someone who’s covered in thorns that don’t bite. “And what about it?” she asks, closing the distance between herself and Moira.

But her smile only widens, and it’s a dangerous smile; it’s a warning, a promise that if Angela stays here any longer, the only thing she’ll find is a place beside Moira and a home within her heart, and like a fool, Angela takes it.

She keeps it, too—she travels the skies, carrying messages of goodwill and well-wishes, conveying the love of the gods to their mortal lovers, and she always comes back to Moira.

Moira, arms open and gaze warm.

Angela thinks she could spend the rest of eternity like this, turning, changing, moving, but always coming back to Moira, back to where her heart belongs, to where she wants to be but could never stay. Moira keeps her grounded, she knows, balancing out her wish to help with the knowledge that there are too far out of her hands.

And yet—

And yet, Angela remembers, things change.

Moira is content to stay grounded, surrounded by the flowers she’s grown with Angela, but she doesn’t look to the heavens and move. No, she stays there, rooted in the good earth, and it’s inescapable that she’d change, that they’d change.

I cannot do this, Moira had said, grief and anger twisting her voice into something unrecognizable.

Angela can feel the press of her own anger, her own frustration, but not grief; no, never grief, not again, and she can taste the bitter words as soon as they leave her tongue. It’s like she’s reliving the moment all over again, breathing the same air that’s long gone, and still she says it.

There’s nothing she can do but go—go with time, pass through the motions.

Moira’s look is torn, the anger gone like summer’s scorching heat and instead replaced with the turn of winter. There’s no odd uneven time that is autumn, uncertain but an absolute chance to breathe, and when Moira turns to speak to him—

Gérard, Angela now knows. His name is Gérard, and he is the god of the Underworld. He’s bound there by more than the cosmos, and that is his love for the goddess named Amélie.

And as always, things change.

Gérard wants freedom, wants to see the passage of life instead of understanding the eternity that is death, and he needs someone to take his stead.

Moira, like a fool, offers.

Angela doesn’t know what possessed her to do this. She doesn’t know if she did anything to warrant this, either, for her heart belongs to Moira and Moira only. There may be her love for the skies, sailing among the clouds, but she will always come back to Moira.

If you had asked, I would have stayed, Angela remembers telling a lone violet, feeling like her chest was a gaping hole only suited for an abyss.

There was no response—why would there be?—and before Moira could descend those treacherous steps, Angela did it herself.)

  


Amélie is gone.

Moira crouches beside the water’s edge, plucking one of the flowers from her shawl and setting it down. There’s surprising weight in the action, and she offers Angela her arm when she rises.

Angela swallows, taking Moira’s arm. “Why?” she asks, but there’s no sad smile this time.

Instead, Moira leans down, and Angela meets her halfway up. “I cursed him because I missed you,” Moira says, breathes, and her fingers curl around Angela’s jaw like they’ve found a home there.

Angela wouldn’t mind staying like this forever, she thinks, enraptured by Moira’s beauty all over again. There’s a lifetime and a half here, more than the heavens can encompass, and she’s only found her all over again.

“Angela?”

She cups Moira’s cheek, murmurs, “Yes?” and doesn’t mistake the way Moira leans into the touch. She revels in it, and Angela thinks that this is what she was missing: the presence of someone she’s known better than the stars, someone she’s missed with her heart and soul, and the promise of life.

Moira’s gaze is warm, and her eyes crinkle with the promise of everything good that’s to come. “I missed you,” she says. “You wouldn’t know how much I missed you if I told you for the rest of eternity.”

Angela studies the curve of her cheek, the delicate turn of her lips, and she finds that there’s only love there. “I’ve missed you and I didn’t know it.”

When Moira closes the distance between them, Angela can’t even begin to wish anything turned out any differently.  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


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